


Promises Made in Symbols

by HecatesKiss



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Rituals, Bonding, M/M, T'hy'la
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HecatesKiss/pseuds/HecatesKiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim receives something very important to Spock, from Spock's own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises Made in Symbols

**Author's Note:**

> For both Helena and Vernie. Consider this my Samhain gift to the pair of you!

Jim sighs and twitches his left foot as he feels the wooden stylus slide across his back. His hands clench into fists as he _forces_ himself not to move. The ink is at the burning-numb-feels-good stage of the line previous, and it has just started to feel like molten lava on the newest set of symbols. A shaky inhale and a controlled slow exhale is his only response. The blunt point traces in careful swirls, feeling like his skin is flaying itself off, like that time the Cardassian had decided he would look prettier _without_ the top layer of his epidermis.

Gentle fingers rest against the nape of his neck and he buries his face into his pillow, blocking out the urge to scream, shunting it aside as a bad idea. He wants this, needs it, if he is true with himself. Bones will be pissed as nothing else when he sees the finished product… but by that point, it will be _done_ and immovable and just _right_.

Turning his head to the side, he sighs and lets his left foot twitch. The wet wood glides again and the agony awakes. Blood slips from between clenched fingers and drips onto the white sheets spread below him, yet he lies still and _endures_.

“It is finished, Jim. Every symbol. Drawn by my own hand.”

“You know, my respect for your Mom just went way up.” Jim manages as the last line of Vulcan script dulls to only a lit cigarette being shoved into his skin and not the scream inducing levels of pain prior. He uncurls his fingers from his palms and stares dispassionately at the crescents of welling blood that decorate both hands.

“My mother never had this ritual performed. It is not to suggest that she did not _care_ for my father… but this was only done by T’hy’la. It is an ancient tradition. One that I --”

“Don’t, Spock. This hurt, yes. But there is _nothing_ I wouldn’t do for you. Even this.” He listens to Spock as the other man moves back, shifting off the bed so that Jim can get to his hands and knees and crabwise his way off the bed until he is standing. The small ceramic bowl, red-orange glaze indicative of it’s Vulcan origin and filled with shockingly blue-black liquid is handed to him, along with the slim wooden stylus. 

Spock then lays himself out on the bed, all pale flesh and lean muscle, face pressed into the pillow, fingers tracing over the spots of bright red blood that stain the sheets. Jim draws in a shaking breath. He has been practicing these symbols in non-permanent ink for months, on the back of his hand with styluses as he does reports, with his fork in his mashed potatoes as he has dinner with Bones and Scotty. Now, he glances down at the sheet of _real_ paper he drew it out on in a different ink, and had Spock triple check. It is the same sheet Spock just used. It is the same statement that will forever exist on his back, in his skin.

It is something Spock has breathed against the back of his neck every night. Has gasped into his shoulder on alien worlds as white hot plasma bolts slammed into the ground around them. It is the one phrase he will never get tired of hearing… of reading… of knowing it means he is totally loved. He settles himself to straddle his naked bondmate and dips the stylus into the blue-black pigment and draws the first swirling circle, adding the precise little dots along the line, breath caught behind his teeth.

He pauses several times, just as Spock did for him. But for Jim it is not pain suppression techniques, it is so that his hand does not shake. So that he does not _mess up_ something that is so important to them both.

Dip. Tap. Draw the line. Add the dot, swipe a slash of the joining line, trail the curve of the connection _just_ so. Breathe. Feel the alien familiar heat of his bondmate as the man _breathes_ and those pointed ears flush slowly green. The very last curve that finishes the statement draws a moan from Spock. Jim lifts his hands and sets the bowl down with great care. It is all the more precious now that Vulcan is no longer in existence.

A gentle press of his lips to Spock’s ear and he breathes the words that are always the last thing he hears before he sleeps every night. The very words now etched into both their skins for the entire galaxy to see, if they know how to read Vulcan. 

__

_“Taluhk nash-veh k’dular.”_

“I cherish thee, my Jim.” Spock responds, somehow utterly boneless in a way that even a mind meld does not leave him. Jim only presses another kiss to that delicately pointed ear and smiles at hearing it in Standard.


End file.
